How Much Electricity Costs to Power Household Devices & How to Cut your Usage

“Micromanaging” has a certain negative connotation due to its application in a work environment.

When it comes to budgeting, however, micromanagement should be embraced (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise).

Any time you are able to not only save yourself some money, but also reduce your negative impact on the planet, that’s a beautiful thing.

One of the areas you can do this with is your household electricity consumption.

I decided to do a little experiment around my house with all of my electricity powered devices and share my findings on their electricity usage with you. My main goal was to find out how much electricity I was wasting and cut that down as much as possible.

How Much Does Electricity Cost for Common Household Devices?

For a long time, I have had a pretty general idea of what my electricity bill has been.

Electricity Monitoring Device Use

In order to do this test, you will need an electricity monitoring device. There is no getting around that.

Hopefully you can learn from my tests, but your personal devices may vary. In other words, there is little universality in electric use. If you want exact numbers for your situation, you will need to get an electricity monitoring device of your own.

Electricity Use Per Device Test Results

The following data is the result of my tests. Note that I used $0.15 per kWh for my calculations. Your cost may vary per your utility company (the Belkin allows you to customize).

Also note that there are, in many cases, multiple tests for each device based on how it may be used (i.e. laptop fully charged vs. charging).

Data shown is in the format of: device tested: watts drawn, $ to power per year, CO2 emissions per year (in lbs.), and lessons specific to each. I did not test things that I used very randomly and for a specific purpose (i.e. an engaged blender or toaster), rather my goal was to find where electricity was being wasted by keeping things plugged in.

Here are some general learnings on electricity costs from the above results:

No need to unplug lamps, but even CFL’s are not cheap to keep on. Turn off the lights when you leave the room! Despite their improvements, light bulbs are still one of the biggest electricity vampires. LED’s are a beautiful thing.

Change the setting in your computer to have a 3 or 5 minute sleep mode delay versus 30 minutes or never. This could save you dozens of $’s per year.

If you don’t have your DVR set to record shows, unplug it. It could save you $40+ per year vs. just turning it off!

Some chargers left plugged in drain energy, but most don’t. If they do, it is not much. Better to not be wasteful though.

I was not expecting to find my blender using energy when not in use. You never know which appliances are vampires. Better to test and have definitive answers than always wonder and feel doubt or even guilt.

DVR’s are never really “off”. My DVR essentially adds another $4 to my cost of cable every month.

Perhaps the most important lesson of all: electricity is still incredibly cheap and incredibly polluting. To think that just $1 of electricity costs equates to about 7.5 lbs. of CO2 emissions is disgusting. If there is any hope for this planet, it lies with solar and other renewable energies.

I estimate that the changes I will make from these learning’s will save me about $75 per year on electricity costs at the $0.15 kWh price. That’s more than 10% of my entire electric bill. As the cost of electricity increases (and it will) that $ amount will only go up every year. I more than made my $30 investment in the Belkin energy monitor back in just the first year, and after I let all of my friends and family borrow it, I can sell it.

24 Comments »

A Kill-A-Watt is a terrific investment. If you follow up on your findings with some minor changes in your daily habits and routines you’ll make up the $20 cost of the unit in no time, all with the satisfaction of reducing your CO2 emissions.

Wow, I had no idea just breathing had that much impact! I’ll hold my breath more often =)
How much CO2 per year does a tree offset and do you know of any charitable organizations that plant trees per your donation?

Thanks for your article, I came across it on a google search to find out how much street lights cost to run. I’m in the UK and have just joined a community tree nursery as a volunteer set up by a District Council using money from developers. We are collecting seed from local native trees (especially the rare ones) growing them and planting them in any parishes that have the space, as well as on the new housing estates and green spaces. I hope the idea catches on. I don’t know if they are able to receive donations, but maybe you have one near you?

This is 3 years too late, and I’m not even sure if the comment was joking, but I feel that I should point out for the record:
CO2 that people/animals exhale is essentially the same CO2 that was taken in by the plants that they ate, or the plants that the animals that they ate, ate. It represents to net CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, and never was, is not, and (**should**) never be the target of emissions reductions. The same is true about burning wood for heat, which releases CO2 that was exactly offset by the CO2 that the tree took in in the past few decades.
There is a world of difference between animals exhaling and burning fossil fuels. Hydrocarbon fuels contain carbon (dioxide) that has been in the ground for millions of years, whose absence the Earth’s atmosphere has has since adjusted for, and fallen into a steady-state – it is CO2 that is not supposed to be in the atmosphere; whereas what we exhale has already been offset, because it was taken out of the atmosphere as the plants were growing (that says nothing about the large amount of fossil fuels that are used in commercial agriculture, but that is another issue entirely).

Here’s a tip to save on energy bills, specifically for those who do not have gas in their homes (like me).

Changing your shower head to a low flow head not only lowers your water bill but also your electricity bill. Unless you take stone cold showers, a good portion of the water you use comes from your water heater, which is powered by electricity. I can’t really measure how much power it’s using but I’d imagine it’s enough to make an impact on your bill, especially if you take long, hot showers or have multiple people living with you.

I’ve had great results using an Alsons 655CBX Fluidics head that gives good pressure while only using 1.6gpm because it aerates the stream.

I bought a kill-a-watt recently and tested everything in my house. My biggest surprises were how much my entertainment center cost ($30/month) and how little my fridge ($6/mo) and deep freezer ($1.50/mo) cost. We have 2 desktop computers which cost about $10/mo each to run (including all accessories and monitor).

I like to fall asleep watching nature shows, so the entertainment center was frequently left on all night. I purchased a timer to automatically turn it off and I’ve already noticed a difference in the monthly bill.

In my apartment, the breaker box is right next to the door. I hit all the breakers except for the fridge when I leave. Except for the occasional cycle of the fridge, the electric meter ain’t spinnin’! It’s a very cool thing.

I know what you’re thinking: “Ohhhh…but I’ll have all those blinking 12:00s on my blah, blah, blah!” Yeah, well GET RID of those things. I don’t have a SINGLE ONE! SIMPLIFY your lives, save money, and be happier.

Make sure you don’t have a desktop computer shutdown or hibernated (not asleep which typically requires small amount of power) if you do this. It won’t take many times doing that before you end up with an unbootable system.

I’m pretty much floored by the results of your testing! I has to admit I had a cognitive dissonance on things like computers left on and printers on idle etc… I knew they were wasting energy but didn’t quite think that much and that it wasn’t making a very big difference on my bill. What blew me away though were the results from a those appliances supposedly off that turned out to be silent energy hogs. Thanks for the eye opening research.

Glad this was eye opening for you. I figure for every one person I can convince to do the same test and take action, I’ve essentially multiplied my carbon footprint reduction, which is an awesome feeling. Pay it forward!

Your Heat and AC are the biggest culprits. Appliances dont consume much alone but together can be pretty costly. There are mobile apps available that will allow you to calculate the costs of running appliances over certain periods of time.

I know this is an old post, but I thought I’d leave a tip anyway. For most fridge lights, you can replace the bulb with a very low wattage LED bulb. This will save on the light being on itself, and it produces next to no heat so it’ll save on the cooling cost too.

Those little standard bulbs get hot and the fridge has to cool them off, there’s a cost to that.

I’m an almost-40 something. I do have a bit of advice. Plugging and unplugging a device frequently (like the blender) can ruin the wall outlet. I assume you use the blender frequently. Replacing the wall outlet will cost you more than you’re spending leaving the blender plugged up. Of course, if you have a strip in the wall where your blender is, no problem. I also discovered I was breaking one of my lamps by constantly pushing the on-off button. I switched the lamp to the outlet controlled by the flip switch on the wall. I haven’t had a problem since.

People really want to save the planet . Lighting accounts for a very small part of your electric consumption. Fridge ,dryer electric stove, clothes washer, furnace/ ac blower are the biggest {vampires} many people have multiple fridges and a deep freeze as well. lighting in a typical home with 40-60 watt incandescent bulbs should be $11.00-$14.00 of your total monthly consumption. You might save your self $4.00 each month with cfl bulbs.as for all of the other tiny {phantom} power drawn from devices , this is so miniscule . Those who are so concerned with co2 emissions must realize driving suvs with 300+ horsepower is pumps out thousand times the co2 that all of your devices and lights combined for a decade. Lets not forget to mention the annual trip to Mexico or Europe. Did you know that one trans Atlantic flight is worth 50 years of driving per passenger? A plane burns a tremendous amount of fuel just taking off and climbing to cruising altitude, not to mention maintaining an airspeed of 800 kmh for 14 hours. Lets focus on the actual significant sources of co2 . I hate cfl bulbs ,they emit a lousy quality and hue of light-so dreadful like a service station restroom would have. Led is somewhat better , still room for improvement. We use incandescent or halogen only. Most are on dimmers ,for asthetics more than saving a few bucks. we have a large enough stock to last 25-30 years. We also drive a Honda Civic and have used a push reel mower for 24 years which makes our carbon footprint a lot smaller than most , even with use of incandescent bulbs.

As far as the comment by Natalie H, fridge-$6.00 month, deepfreeze $1.60 a month? bread machine 5 cents per cycle? I would assume there was some sort of error while performing the test or calculating. Most modern fridges will typically cost $13.00-$18.00 a month to run. Remember, a great portion of your utility bill comes in fees. administration fee, network fee existing network fee, rider fee, modification fee……Most people seem to think their bill went down significantly due to something they changed, usually though it can be explained by fluctuations in fee charges.